In Mexico, critics say political corruption worsened impact of storms

Villagers in San Jeronimo crowd around a helicopter from the Mexico attorney general's office to get aid Friday after the rains and floods caused by Tropical Storm Manuel.

Villagers in San Jeronimo crowd around a helicopter from the Mexico...

MEXICO CITY — The twin storms that tore through the country this week, unleashing rains that sent mud crashing down hillsides, buckling roads and flooding coastal cities, have renewed criticism that corruption and political shortsightedness made the damage even worse.

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The death toll stood at 97 on Friday but was expected to rise as rescue workers reached by air isolated mountain villages that had been cut off by landslides along Mexico's Pacific coast. Soldiers continued their search Friday for 68 missing victims in La Pintada, a coffee-growing village in Guerrero state where a hillside had given way and a river of mud poured over the town's center.

“Anywhere you fly over you will see a number of landslides that are truly shocking,” Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said Friday.

The storms battered both the Pacific and Gulf coasts starting last weekend, a rare double hit from tropical systems at the same time. But experts said officials had not learned from earlier hurricanes and had failed to prepare for disaster, which magnified the losses this time.

“If we had the right development plan, the country wouldn't fall into chaos,” said Angel Macías Garza, the vice president for infrastructure at Mexican Construction Industry Chamber.

Corrupt officials give building permits to developers to build along riverbeds and in canyons, Macías said. State governors build roads without containing walls in flood-prone regions because they prefer to spend the money they save on handouts. The federal disaster fund allocates only 5 percent of its budget on prevention and the other 95 percent on reconstruction.

“Politically, prevention doesn't pay,” Macías said. “There is a lack of vision and a lack of resources.”

In an editorial posted on its website, Cidac, a research group, echoed the criticism. “Taking preventive measures, like relocating settlements from the most vulnerable areas or investing in infrastructure,” the authors said, “don't appear to sell ad space or generate grateful constituencies.”

The worst natural disaster to affect Mexico in years began last weekend when Manuel, a tropical storm, battered Acapulco and the surrounding Pacific Coast at the same time as Hurricane Ingrid, a category 1 storm, bore down on the Gulf Coast. Mexico had not seen paired storms on both coasts since 1958, officials said. Manuel then spun out to sea and gathered force before buffeting Sinaloa state in the north again Thursday.

President Enrique Peña Nieto, whose performance in the crisis is being closely scored, has spent most of the week flying between coasts to monitor rescue efforts, and canceled a visit to New York next week to address the U.N.

He has been pushing congress to approve an ambitious agenda of new laws that would raise taxes, open up the energy sector and confront powerful monopolies.

Mexico's economy has stagnated, and growth may not even reach the government's tepid forecast of 1.8 percent. Peña Nieto's plans for massive new investments in infrastructure to help jump-start the economy could be derailed by the cost of cleaning up after the storm. Mexico's construction trade association estimated that fixing the roads alone could cost more than $3 billion.

Still, the president said Wednesday, these storms “will not paralyze the development that Mexico should have.”